


Arrière Pensée

by venli



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, A Place of Greater Safety - Hilary Mantel, American Revolution RPF, French History RPF, French Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: (a wacky combination between the two), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Politics, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Class Differences, F/F, F/M, M/M, flawed democracy, pitch: no one is white & straight
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:06:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21745723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venli/pseuds/venli
Summary: So: the monarchy does not gut itself on their shrine, haruspex oroffrande, but sputters out instead, gives like a tired lung. The republic is never born, never shaped by their hands; it derives, la grande suivante, a mere tally at the end of the day.In this world, it's 2019, France is a presidential republic, and the separation of powers is nothing more than a dinner anecdote.(In which the French Revolution did not exactly happen, not quite the right way.)
Relationships: Adrienne de Lafayette & Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette, Camille Desmoulins & Maximilien Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins/Lucile Desmoulins, Georges Jacques Danton/Camille Desmoulins, Éléonore Duplay/Maximilien Robespierre
Kudos: 11





	Arrière Pensée

> For all of my years, I’ve read only living signs —  
> bodies in jealousy, bodies in battle,   
> bodies growing disease like mushroom coral.

\- _speak to us_ , Katie Ford

Night comes in flashes of what could've been; on the inside of his eyelids, sealed shut like mother of pearl, history fragments begin to play out. They are nondescript, shoddy things - easily accounted for by the weight of childhood folly. They are candlelit scenes, the oily smell of tallow melting, torn coats billowing in the wind, moth-bitten and patched, running while holding your trousers with one hand, gripping your ribs with the other. Thin soles battering the cobblestones. They are the pastures of a country that's not quite yours, the greens all wrong, the borders drawn into the earth. They are sinking into a lush bed and pulling over the curtains. The skin of an inner thigh, like a bird's underbelly, rising and shrinking against the sheets. A scarred face blocking out the sun. This goes on for years and days; long past childhood, long past the common sense that is imagination, the tacit agreement between consciousness and spirit.

In that mass of pulsing silver, more gas than dream state, amorphous and diffusive, the king never falls. He is only replaced by its weaker counterpart, one dimmer, more malleable symbol, someone more compromise than flesh. Long live [Comte d'Artois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVIII_of_France), no latin words for it. Long live whoever steps through the pooling blood. Economy changes; social policy does not. The colonies are expanded and sapped, twice the traffic going through them, bringing France at heel with the rest of the world. National debt decreases, the price of bread stays the same. No one with the right blood dies, so Britain hardly cares. No one with the wrong blood wins, so Austria doesn't, either. The Church still mandates half the Assembly votes, and when religion is ousted from public mindset, it doesn't even leave through the door before it crashes again through the window.

A century changes too little. Two centuries? Only a little more. Aristocracy is bolstered by industry, industry by technology, capital crosses hands and shapeshifts, prosaic alchemy at work. Like the faces of kings minted on coins, so too money becomes sequential, becomes more than itself. It's estates and action shares, it's artworks delineating the lobby, it's the laminated cover of your passport and the postcode of your residential area. It's education, and where, and why - the endless cursus honorum. As above, so below, power is absolute, genealogic, puritanical. You cannot absorb it: you can only hope it splatters you in its trail. Without the marked spots, you're more or less condemned, and who cares if the decree comes from [Matignon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B4tel_Matignon) or Versailles? If it's set in 1770 or three hundred years after? Did knowing the firewood ever temper the flames?

So: the monarchy does not gut itself on their shrine, haruspex or offrande, but sputters out instead, gives like a tired lung. The republic is never born, never shaped by their hands; it derives, la grande suivante, a mere tally at the end of the day.

In this world, it's 2019, France is a presidential republic, and the separation of powers is nothing more than a dinner anecdote.

History takes no reservations, he supposes. Sure, it has its air pockets, its lapses - small reconstructions, like being born three centuries late or not at all - _sit this one out, son -_ but ultimately it answers for its own balance. An event ringing out in one world will echo in another. The sound has to come from somewhere. The fire must be kept. And so they fight.

In this world, they did not make the republic.

They still die for it.


End file.
